Panchayat bye-poll for 131 seats in Arunachal Pradesh on July 12

OUR CORRESPONDENT

ITANAGAR: The Arunachal Pradesh State Election Commission on Tuesday announced bye-poll to 130 gram panchayat seats along with one zila parishad seat on July 12.

Election to 40 gram panchayat seats and one in zila parishad in Vijoynagar administrative subdivision under Changlang district have, however, been kept pending due to law and order and other administrative issues, State Election Commissioner Hage Kojeen told media persons here.

Kojeen said that 11 seats have been excluded from the election process due to court cases pending before the Election Tribunal and Itanagar bench of Gauhati High Court. The seats where elections will be held fell vacant due to reasons ranging from rejection of nomination papers during the local bodies election in December 2020, non-availability of eligible candidates, disqualification under anti-defection laws, law and order problem to death and resignation by several winning candidates, he said.

The bye-poll will be held in 101 polling station spread across 20 districts of the state. An estimated 7,000 voters are eligible to exercise their franchise. Among the districts, Lower Subansiri has the highest number of vacancies with 41 gram panchayat seats, followed by 11 in Upper Subansiri, nine in Lower Dibang Valley, seven each in East Siang and West Siang and six each in East and West Kameng districts respectively, he said.

The notification for the panchayat bye-poll will be issued on June 14 and June 21 has been fixed as the last date for filing nominations. Scrutiny of papers will be held on June 23, while last date for withdrawal of papers has been fixed on June 27, he said. Counting of votes would be held on July 16, Kojeen added.

"A consultative meeting with the state government was held recently wherein relevant issues, including security arrangements were discussed to ensure free, fair and peaceful election," he said.

The SEC had also conducted review meeting with all the district election officers on election preparedness. More than 500 election officials will be involved in the panchayat bye-poll excluding security personnel. Election observers will be deployed as per requirement on the recommendation of the district election officers, while two special observers from outside would also be present.

The SEC appealed to all the stakeholders and political parties to extend their support in conducting the by-elections in a free, fair and peaceful manner. Arunachal has a total 8145 gram panchayat and 242 zila parishad seats.

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